I dunno. Now that i think about it, I actually liked where the Xbox One was going with things. They just presented it in a really dumb way, tried to force kinect on people, etc.

Digital games sharing is such an awesome idea. If Xbone was $400, didn't force kinect, was digital only, had 1-time game gifting, game sharing with family and friends, and had planned semi-annual sales on digital content, it would be an easy choice over a DRM-free PS4 primarily focused on physical media.

I'm still gonna get one next year at some point and it is nice to see the 180 they did but they may need to offer some more incentive to wash the bad taste out of gamers mouths. Kinect...don't really care as you can disable it to some extent. The price tag is the main thing for me as the alternative is what I'm getting this Xmas season. Its going to have to be about exclusive titles and I don't think Halo is going to save it completely.

I guess it's possible that they might have done this, but they never said they would and MS doesn't have a great track record in that regard. PSN actually has had much better sales and regular price drops of digital content than XBLA, even for purely digital stuff and especially for digtal+physical releases. While they still haven't quite reached the level of Steam sales there definitely are some good deals. Random example: the new Tomb Raider game was just $20 last week. MS seems to keep things at MSRP even after physical copies are being sold in the bargain bin.

I wish I was as optimistic abotu this 'voices being heard' thing as some of you guys are. All I see is a company caving to financial pressure and pressure from other industry leaders. I'm the kind of guy, though, who believes a corporation will not do anything, ever, unless it is something they are being fiscally required to do, and would pee in your corn flakes every morning if it made them an extra buck in sales per day.

That said, I do think they had the beginnings of some good ideas in there. I still don't think, even if they had fantastic hardware offerings, I'd be getting one though, since Microsoft's library has historically been almost bereft of anything I'd want. Lost Odyssey and Phantom Dust were amazing, but in hindsight, were they worth me getting those consoles? Not for me.

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Friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn't matter, but work is third.

I dunno. Now that i think about it, I actually liked where the Xbox One was going with things. They just presented it in a really dumb way, tried to force kinect on people, etc.

Digital games sharing is such an awesome idea. If Xbone was $400, didn't force kinect, was digital only, had 1-time game gifting, game sharing with family and friends, and had planned semi-annual sales on digital content, it would be an easy choice over a DRM-free PS4 primarily focused on physical media.

The sharing is the strangest thing. There was no need to drop the digital sharing just to be able to play from disks and not have the 24hr check in. Every time you buy something digitally it's recorded in your account and free to redownload... so they're already making a digital list of games per user. There's no reason they couldn't have that as a "family share" type of deal exactly as they'd said, and just not add disks you buy physically to that digital share collection. Whether you "check in" once a day has no bearing on that at all, and I see no reasons that dropping the check would *make* them drop that.

I'm the kind of guy, though, who believes a corporation will not do anything, ever, unless it is something they are being fiscally required to do

I am more or less of the same mindset, although I think there are exceptions. Microsoft's probably not one of them, but I think they're out there. It may be partially a question of size, because the concrete examples I'm thinking of are small businesses where I know the owners have cut off clients who are buying more than they can really afford. (Their credit cards were still accepted, but they shouldn't have been using them for those products.)

I wish I was as optimistic abotu this 'voices being heard' thing as some of you guys are. All I see is a company caving to financial pressure and pressure from other industry leaders. I'm the kind of guy, though, who believes a corporation will not do anything, ever, unless it is something they are being fiscally required to do, and would pee in your corn flakes every morning if it made them an extra buck in sales per day.

Of course this is about money. I never thought otherwise. That isn't really my point, though. This is less about MS and more about the realization that there really is a line that you can push too far and make consumers react. Because frankly before this there were a lot of people with the mentality that it's all just a bunch of whining and in the end people will buy it anyway and "deal with it". Consumers, collectively, have spoken and what they're saying is that we're not going to buy that shit. And that's a good thing.

Obviously MS reacted because they had to, not because they wanted to. I don't think there's the slightest bit of good samaritanism here (well, actually maybe the region-free thing, since I don't think that was most people's complaint and Nintendo seems to get away with it...). The point is that we, as consumers, are not totally powerless. That is what I'm celebrating.

I wish I was as optimistic abotu this 'voices being heard' thing as some of you guys are. All I see is a company caving to financial pressure and pressure from other industry leaders. I'm the kind of guy, though, who believes a corporation will not do anything, ever, unless it is something they are being fiscally required to do, and would pee in your corn flakes every morning if it made them an extra buck in sales per day.

Of course this is about money. I never thought otherwise. That isn't really my point, though. This is less about MS and more about the realization that there really is a line that you can push too far and make consumers react. Because frankly before this there were a lot of people with the mentality that it's all just a bunch of whining and in the end people will buy it anyway and "deal with it". Consumers, collectively, have spoken and what they're saying is that we're not going to buy that shit. And that's a good thing.

Obviously MS reacted because they had to, not because they wanted to. I don't think there's the slightest bit of good samaritanism here (well, actually maybe the region-free thing, since I don't think that was most people's complaint and Nintendo seems to get away with it...). The point is that we, as consumers, are not totally powerless. That is what I'm celebrating.

Yeah okay, well-stated. You make a good point.

And it IS good news on the region-free thing.

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Friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn't matter, but work is third.

I guess it's possible that they might have done this, but they never said they would and MS doesn't have a great track record in that regard. PSN actually has had much better sales and regular price drops of digital content than XBLA, even for purely digital stuff and especially for digtal+physical releases. While they still haven't quite reached the level of Steam sales there definitely are some good deals. Random example: the new Tomb Raider game was just $20 last week. MS seems to keep things at MSRP even after physical copies are being sold in the bargain bin.

I guess i just wanted the Steam of consoles. Except they could be even better than steam. I'd sacrifice a little discount depth for all the benefits and advantages of a console platform. The sale model of $60 retail games is just not sustainable. The move to digital COULD benefit us all. Now we can stick with the shitty online passes and petty DLC model. :/

And I agree MS doesn't have a great track record. I honestly respect them very little as a video game company.

too little too late. though i kinda want xbox to fail because i partly blame them for this dismal rpg generation. and ive hated the xbox since the first one that was broadband only when a lot of people still had dial up. so they have a history of trying to force things.

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“Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.”

I wish I was as optimistic abotu this 'voices being heard' thing as some of you guys are. All I see is a company caving to financial pressure and pressure from other industry leaders. I'm the kind of guy, though, who believes a corporation will not do anything, ever, unless it is something they are being fiscally required to do, and would pee in your corn flakes every morning if it made them an extra buck in sales per day.

Of course this is about money. I never thought otherwise. That isn't really my point, though. This is less about MS and more about the realization that there really is a line that you can push too far and make consumers react. Because frankly before this there were a lot of people with the mentality that it's all just a bunch of whining and in the end people will buy it anyway and "deal with it". Consumers, collectively, have spoken and what they're saying is that we're not going to buy that shit. And that's a good thing.

Obviously MS reacted because they had to, not because they wanted to. I don't think there's the slightest bit of good samaritanism here (well, actually maybe the region-free thing, since I don't think that was most people's complaint and Nintendo seems to get away with it...). The point is that we, as consumers, are not totally powerless. That is what I'm celebrating.

I'm guessing the region free thing was because CD Projekt had a few choice words for them not having a launch in Poland.